We're Hiring Our Boss

Samuel Bryan • May 11

We're Hiring our Boss

Hello world, we are three self-taught programmers who are hiring our boss here at LBRY.

We aren’t writers, but we are three developers who are able to get things done (like writing this post). The purpose of this blog post is to tell you who we are, what we are looking for, and why it would be awesome to be our boss.

If you’re just hearing about LBRY for the first time, it is an open-source, blockchain-based, decentralized digital media protocol. We're the team that builds applications that use the protocol. That is, we build the ways most people interact with and use LBRY.

Who we are

I'm Sean, I joined LBRY in November to work on the LBRY desktop app after making a few small contributions on my own. Before that I was working with React and Node on Walmart.com for 1.5 years after teaching myself to code. I am very interested in user experience, and creating simple apps that are easy to use.

I’m Bill. I found out about LBRY while exploring blockchain applications and was quickly hooked by the vibrant dev community that had already sprung up around their alpha build. I love building web apps and exploring new technologies, so it wasn’t long before I jumped in and starting to building on top of the LBRY network.

I’m Akinwale. I discovered LBRY when my interest in cryptocurrencies got rekindled in early 2017 and I was looking for a coin to mine. I found the project really exciting which led to my decision to start contributing to the desktop app. One thing led to another, and I eventually started working on getting the Android version up and running.

What we're looking for

As self-taught developers, we are able to complete and implement features, but we would really like mentorship in the planning and decision making before we start coding. In other words, we are confident in our cutting skills, and are looking for a seasoned veteran who can help us measure twice. Someone who can tell us, "These are the best practices and this is the reason why."
If you’re wondering what we’re wondering about, these are some of our recent discussion topics:

App architecture (How data flows)

React performance

React Native performance

Electron performance

How to model the data. What should the application state look like?

Efficient styling rules and patterns

Knowledge about javascript packaging

Testing (What is worth testing)

Authentication

Devops (CI/CD)

Load handling and scalability

Why being our boss would be awesome

We are working on the intersection of blockchain and web technologies, and that’s a pretty cool thing. Being on the forefront of this space is ripe with new challenges, but working on problems that not many people have worked on before is what gets us excited to continue to learn and build.

I (Sean) work on the LBRY Electron app, which is built for macOS, linux, and windows. It starts up the LBRY daemon and interacts with it locally, as well as an API server that handles authentication and rewards. This app is a showcase for what can be done on the LBRY blockchain and we will continue to build features as the the functionality becomes available. We get a lot of community contributions which is also very cool.

Bill (me) works on the spee.ch web app, which is a portal for users to upload and retrieve content from the LBRY network from the browser. Initially conceived as a simple imgur alternative on the blockchain, the project has grown immensely both in how, and how much, it is used. As the user base has grown from a handful of visits to hundreds of thousands of requests per day, we have embarked on a journey to build out a multi-site ecosystem where developers can create their own spee.ch-like websites using a common code base.

I (Akinwale) work on the LBRY Android app, which is an interesting combination of technologies: React Native (the frontend), Python (the LBRY daemon) and Java (for access to the native platform API). It is similar in functionality to the Electron app with shared code across platforms, and we’d love to be able to present virtually the same experience to the user for both platforms.

We love Node, React, and all web technologies and we are looking forward to working with someone who shares the same excitement!